Memory & Perception Flashcards
What is Pragnanz and what theoretical family does it belong to?
It’s the idea that experience will be organised as meaningful, symmetrical and simple whenever possible. (This is the fundamental idea of Gestalt psychology).
What are the 7 ways in which we execute pragnanz, according to Gestalt?
- Closure (filling in the gaps to complete a picuture that seems obvious)
- Proximity (tendency to group things based on how close they are)
- Continuation (create figures based on our expectation rather than what is seen)
- Similarity (tendency to group things based on how similar they seem to us)
- Symmetry (tendency to group things based on how similar they seem to us)
- Constancy (the tendency to percieve objects in a way that we are familiar with)
- Minimum principle (the tendency to see what is easiest or most logical)
Anne Treisman amended the filter model of attention to the 1 model of attention. This model introduces a pehmonea called 2, which accounts for 3?
- Attenuated
- Cocktail party effect
- the ability of a person in a conversation to detect their name (or something salient) across the room.
Broadbent’s filter model of attention believes that inforamtion, which is not 1 will be 2 and 3?
- attended to
- filtered out
- decays
Describe Structuralist Theory?
The thoery asserts that perception is the sum total of sensory input and focusses on the bottom-up processing.
Describe Gestalt Theory/Psychology.
Gestalt asserts that people tend to see the world in terms of organised wholes rather than constituent parts, focussing on top-down processing.
What is proprioception?
Cognitive awareness of where our bodies are in space at any given time.
What provides muscle memory?
spindles (receptors)
What are the 2 types of sensory corpuscles?
- Meissners - touch or contact of skin
- Pacinian - displacement of skin
What is Nativist Theory?
The perception theory that asserts that perception and cognition are largely innate and genetically based.
Humans are born with all perceptual capacities - some present at birth and some develop as the person matures.
What is Empiricist Theory?
Believes that perception is basically learned and develops as the individual adapts to their environment.
What are the 3 thresholds for stimulus detection?
- Absolute threshold - minimun amount of stimulus detected 50% of the time.
- Differential threshold - (Just Noticeable Difference) the minimum difference that must occur between 2 stimuli in order for them to be perceived as different intensities.
- Terminal threshold - the upper limit above which the stimuli can no longer be perceived.
What are the four types of reasoning?
- Convergent thinking
- Divergent thinking
- Deductive reasoning
- Inductive reasoning
What suggests that people make choices based on their personal preferences?
Utility theory
What is another name for Reaction Time? And what does it mean?
- Latency
- the measure of cognitive processing
Explain the Stroup Effect.
Explains the decreased speed of naming the color of ink used to print a word when the color of ink and the word itself are different colors.
List and describe the main two theories which suggest the origin of forgetting.
- Decay theory (trace theory): posits tht memorie fade with time
- Interference theory: suggests that competing information blocks retrieval